Xbox's new chief strategy officer is still a big believer in in-game ads
Overview & Key Takeaways
Matthew Ball predicted a rise in ad-supported gaming before joining Xbox, and he still thinks it's a good idea.
Videogame analyst Matthew Ball predicted in his "State of Videogaming in 2026" report released earlier this year that in-game ad placements will become more common in PC and console games and services in the future, as they're a largely untapped source of revenue—income the industry needs and is increasingly struggling to find. Now he's the newly-hired chief strategy officer for Xbox, and in an interview with The Game Business, he says he hasn't changed his mind.
Ball said the issue is a "two-sided problem": The cost of making games keeps going up, particularly on the big-budget side of the street where Microsoft lives, and so is the cost of the hardware on which those games are played. All of that ultimately lands in the lap of consumers, who are eventually forced to reduce or stop spending money on games—and that's bad for the game companies in turn, because without consumer spending, growth stops, and growth is the core pillar of the economic system we've decided is best.
The solution, then, at least for this particular aspect of what is actually a very big and broad problem, is to figure out some way to keep people coming through the door (lower prices) without cutting into the monthly take (the consequence of lower prices). Thus, ads.
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"I think the best evidence comes from the [TV] streaming space," Ball said. "In excess of 100% of net adds in the United States for years and years have been on the ad-supported tier. That has not excluded anyone from ad-free experiences. Those products are still there. They’re still popular.
"The question is not can we cram ads in everything. The question is, are there opportunities that allow the people who can't afford, or wouldn't try, to have an onboard to our properties and franchises?"
A recent Comscore report supports Ball's claim. Simply put, Netflix is embracing lower-priced ad-support subscription tiers because that's where the growth is: 45% of the service's "total household viewing hours" came from the ad-supported tier in 2025. And it's not unique to Netflix, as "total hours watched across major free ad supported streaming services grew by 43 percent year-over-year."
Whether or not it will actually happen (although I think the real question at this point is, how soon will it happen?), Ball cannot say: He's the chief strategy officer for Xbox so it seems like the kind of thing that would be right up his alley, but he said he's not privy to Microsoft's monetization plans. He does think it's a good idea, though, and not just for Xbox, but for gamers as a whole.
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"[His interest] is coming from that perspective of how do we reach more people? How do we keep our products affordable? How do we make sure that we can continue to fund outstanding work from our development teams?" Ball said. "That’s the goal. It’s not about placing an ad in front of someone so that we can sell, you know, a pizza."
